


Marhapörkölt

by mitzvahmelting



Category: Bandom, Nate Ruess - Fandom, fun.
Genre: F/M, Gender Issues, Sexuality Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-21 07:52:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6043906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitzvahmelting/pseuds/mitzvahmelting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In order to make him happy, he must be able to take care of her.  In order to make her happy, she must be able to take care of him.  Maybe that's why they'll never work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marhapörkölt

**Author's Note:**

> imported from my fanfic blog 100funfics.tumblr.com

 

And now they room together.

It’s been three years, that they’ve known each other.  And, in those three years, all of the “normal” protocol for having a girl in a band made mostly of boys has been followed to the letter.

For the first few months of the first tour, she got her own hotel room. She got her own dressing room. Slowly, those things went away because she didn’t like being separated on account of her gender and she didn’t mind changing in the same room with the guys.  But it had to happen slowly.  Because they were afraid of making her uncomfortable.

It’s careful work, having a girl in the band.  For awhile, she and Nattie roomed together, because they were the closest (and, also, Nate was pretty sure they’d been making out, that one time he walked into their hotel room unannounced).  But then - and without explanation or decision, too - she transitioned to floating from one roommate to the next, like they all did.  It was more fair for everyone to room with everyone by random assignment.  They all liked each other.  They all were good friends.

But something happened.

First of all, Andrew got married.  And Jack started dating Lena.  And Nattie and Will became inextricable from each other’s presence.

And then Nate and Rachel broke up.

So, logically, it made the most sense for Emily and Nate to room together.  That’s been going on for about three weeks now.

It’d been awkward at first, because they’d been friends but they hadn’t been _friends_. He’d known that she liked seafood and that she never shouted and that she had a mother and a father and a little sister.  But he didn’t know her like a friend. He wasn’t familiar with her mannerisms or the way her hugs felt or the smile she gave when she was really not interested in whatever was being said.  He’d never known the way her cropped hair framed her face or the way she wasn’t a _girl_ in the sense that she needed to be protected from dressing in the same room as the guys.

She was everything he’d always wanted in a friend. He’d never had a friend who was a girl.  She reminded him of his older sister.

And now they room together.

…

They’re back in Europe again, after not being on tour for nearly two weeks.  The plane ride isn’t awful.  He sits next to her, pops peanuts like pills and tells her all about Arizona even though she’s probably not even listening (but that’s okay, at least she’s not wearing headphones like Jack or sleeping like Andrew.)  “I can’t believe I hadn’t seen him in so long.” he explains, about Sam, “It felt like we just picked up where we’d left off.  His merchandise store - we’d only been talking about it, last time I’d seen him, but now it’s a full company.  And his kid is huge.”

She looks at him, the corner of her lips tugged up in a sort of half smile, “Huge? That’s the adjective you’re going to use?”

“What’s wrong with huge?”

“She just turned two, Nate.”

“But compare her now to when I last saw her!” he gesticulates at the back of the seat in front of him.  “She was barely even a thing, yet.  They’d just found out they were pregnant.”  The plane is flying over a mountain range.  Emily is looking out the window.  Nate is struck by the sudden urge to fall asleep, but he doesn’t have anything to lean against. He remarks, instead, “You got a haircut.”

She nods.  “Yes, I did.”

“It’s nice.”

He says a lot of things throughout the rest of the flight, but that was the one thing he was most proud of himself for remembering to say, because it made her smile a little bit brighter, and she said “Thanks, boss.”

…

And now they room together.  And he starts to say more and more things like that.  Like when they wake up in the morning (she always wakes up first, he doesn’t know why), and she comes out of the bathroom with her hair dried and her eyelids shaded slightly and he doesn’t really know how to compliment that without making it sound weird so he just says “You look really pretty.”

She kind of stops in her tracks, fingers of one hand frozen in the process of slipping an earring in, bare toes digging into the hotel carpet. “Thanks, boss.” she says, but her eyebrows are curled in and the end of her phrase turns up like a question.

He shrugs. “You’re welcome.”

She unfreezes, finishing with the earring and running a hand through her hair.  “You do realize this is part of my job, Nate, right?”

“How do you mean?”

“I’ve got to make you guys look good, right? And that doesn’t mean just playing guitar and sax and singing your harmonies.”

“Oh.” he says, understanding her implication.  “Well, I mean, we all have to look good.”

“You don’t understand.” she says, then shrugs, crawling back onto the bed and finding her laptop from her bag.  “It’s alright, I don’t expect you to. You should shower, we’ve got to leave in half an hour.”

…

One week.  Two weeks.  

They hop from country to country with little effort. All of the stress of travelling is kept to a minimum because the tour manager runs a tight ship.  

And he becomes obsessed with what she’d told him.  That he doesn’t understand.  That there was something fundamental about what made her her that he would simply never understand.  He bugs her about it, a couple of times, asking questions about how her experience is different from his, about what it means to be Emily Moore and why that’s such an important distinction.

She laughs at him.  In his face. Multiple times. Not a mean laugh, but a sort of laugh that makes him frustrated.  Makes him realize that she doesn’t think of him in the same way that he’s taken to thinking about her.

Her eyes are shaded and he’s got this itch to know everything there is to know about her.

And, really, that’s how touring life usually is, anyway. Lots of procedure, and then inspiration or obsession comes in short bursts.  But this time is different, because it’s _Emily_ , and she’s a girl, and every night he falls asleep near her and every morning he wakes up to the sound of her humming in the bathroom as she prepares for the day.

On a Thursday, she finally throws him a bone.  She - with a chin tip - motions for him to come over to the bathroom where she is putting on makeup.

She always gets ready first, so he’s only wearing his tank top and boxer shorts, but he’s more uncomfortable about that than she is. “What does it mean?” he asks her.

“What does it… mean?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess it means power.  It means beauty, rather, and beauty is power.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”  Her cheeks are already clean and - according to his gaze - carry all classic markings of beauty that anyone could possibly need ever, from skin tone to clarity to softness to smoothness to shape.  But she dusts on foundation anyway.  He doesn’t understand, so he just watches, shoulder leaning against the doorway, arms wrapped around his stomach.  “You’re like a two-year old, boss.” she tells him.

“Why?” he asks.

“Because you keep asking ‘why,’ over and over and over again.” she says, then moves onto lipstick.  “You should shower.”

“I don’t want to, yet.  I’m watching you.”

“It’s like you’ve never seen makeup before.”

“I’ve seen it.  I just…” he pauses, “I just didn’t realize you - of all people - took it so seriously.”

Emily winces, and turns to Nate, arms crossing over her chest.  “What do you mean, ‘of all people’?”

“Just, you’ve got such short hair is all.”

“You think that, just because a person wears shorter hair, they can’t wear makeup?“

He sighs.  "I don’t know, it’s just…”

He trails off, and she prompts him, “It’s just…”

He says “different.” She says “butch.”

She finishes with herself, checks herself in the mirror, and, satisfied, leaves the room, brushing past him in the process, her shoulder knocking into the top of his arm.  He doesn’t stop her, but he worries - not just then but for the next three days - if he has said something wrong.  Insulted her femininity. Invalidated her choices.

(His mother had never worn much makeup except on Very Special Occasions, and his sister had never let him see her putting on makeup, and Rachel had only ever put on makeup when she felt like it would seriously change everyone’s perception of her that day, so this is definitely new and mostly uncharted territory.)

…

He doesn’t do nearly as much as anyone else during soundcheck. They have to tune, have to make sure all of the instruments are in order, have to make sure that, if they’re using a piano that belongs to the stage, that that piano is in tune and, ultimately, that they all sound good with or without a vocalist.  And recently they’d just played a show in Italy that the piano had gone drastically, noticeably out of tune during We Are Young, so they spend even _more_ time on soundcheck than usual.  He just sits in the wing and watches, yawns and plays Tetris and waits.

(It’s Emily’s turn. He lowers his phone into his lap and watches, subtly.  Her eyes are distracting, and so are her lips, and the vibrato of her voice and her form, her hips and her chest and her collarbones and her calves and her sandals.  It seems unfair that a single person possess so many artifacts of beauty.  He doesn’t like it.  He loses his Tetris game.)

She sings into the microphone, shifting her weight to the beat of her fingers strumming the guitar.

(There’s something about her that makes it hard to look away.)

She doesn’t notice him looking.  Or maybe she does, but she doesn’t react, she just does her job.  (And it bothers him that she thinks of it as a job.  He feels like, if she and Nattie and Will think that this is a _job_ , then maybe he’s doing something wrong.)

…

And now they room together.

She prefers, he notices, to go to sleep last and wake up first.  When he asks, she says - jokingly – that it’s because she doesn’t want to miss anything.  But he thinks it’s probably because she doesn’t trust him.  But he can’t understand why he’s untrustworthy, because he would never do anything to hurt her – and, of all of his convictions (and he has many, living his life song by song), that’s the simplest.  That he loves Emily Moore and he wants to make her happy.  That’s all. It’s concise.  He likes the clarity that that mindset offers him.

His belief in the concept of devotion – even if it’s unrequited – defines his perception of the world for about three or four days.  So they’ve been rooming together for three weeks and three or four days and suddenly he’s in love with her, and that doesn’t make much sense but she represents, to him, the simplification of love and relationships and he _needs simple._

So it’s not like he’s going to tell her.  But he tries to show her.  The time he spends near her, daily, rises exponentially, and when he’s not near her he jots down analysis of his emotions into his phone, deciphers between feelings of admiration and feelings of lust, discovers that the feelings of lust are minimal.  Not that it matters. Nothing substantial will come of this.

It’s another wave of obsession and this time he knows how to not drown.

…

And then the obsession dies down, the tide returns to sea, and suddenly it’s not love.  It’s need.  And that’s the worst.  That’s what makes his chest feel hollow.

“Someone should make a Starbucks run.” She says.  They’re sitting next to each other on the edge of the drumset platform.  Will, in a tank top with his bare left arm brushing against Emily’s shoulder, is turning Nate green.

“I’ll go with you.” Nate offers.

“No, you won’t.” she says.  She points to the funny-looking Swedish trio, in the house, sitting three rows back with their cameras.  “You’re going to be interviewed, boss.”

“Oh.”  So Will is going to go with her and be with her in the soft, slightly hipster but mostly corporate-tested aura of a chain coffeeshop in a foreign country and Nate is going to talk to a few blond people and try not to let it slip that he is truly _psychotic_.

Or maybe he’s not crazy.  

When they return fifteen minutes later with drink trays (he actually hasn’t been interviewed yet or anything, it feels like a lost opportunity), she comes over to him and sits next to him and hands him the hot chocolate that he didn’t ask for.

And he looks at her, searchingly, and she just smiles at him, nudges his shoulder like it’s an inside joke.  He smiles and sips the drink and feels warm, next to her.

…

That night, she goes out to the bars with Nattie and Will and Jack.  Andrew comes to Nate’s room and they stream the basketball game on Andrew’s impressive-looking laptop.  Nate knows that, since they’re rooting for opposite teams they probably shouldn’t be watching the game together, but they have no one else to watch with.  So Nate cheers whenever Andrew boos and vice versa, and whenever Andrew get’s annoyed he puts his hands on his head in frustration, and Nate takes the opportunity to taser him with two fingers jabbed under his ribcage, leading to laughter and half-hearted swearing.

Emily arrives back at the room at a quarter to one in the morning, and even though the game hasn’t finished, Andrew decides that he probably ought to leave, let them sleep.  It’s a courtesy to Emily, that much is obvious, and it’s because she’s a girl and it seems, in Andrew’s head, chivalrous.  

“You’re only leaving because Toronto’s got the lead.” Nate teases.  The windows are dark and the recess lighting is off, the lamps are radiating this yellow, tired light that was good for watching the laptop but now… now that Emily is here, slightly flushed from the alcohol, the lighting is too intimate.

Or… Emily is _home_.

Andrew leaves, and Emily sits on her bed and removes her sandals.  Nate pulls the comforter of his bed up to his neck and lies there, watching her.  She doesn’t tell him to look away or anything.  She doesn’t mind him.  She doesn’t pay attention.

She’s not drunk.

“How was it?” he asks, to break the silence.

“Fun.” she says, “Nattie and Will never stop, you know?  No matter how much energy they exhaust during the show, they just keep going and going.  And I’m always the one who has to stay sober enough to get them back to the hotel alive.”

“Oh.  Well, at least they don’t expect you to party hard or anything.”

“True. That’d be exhausting.”

She breathes in, and the dress tightens around her form, and he mirrors her, unconsciously, the blanket rising and falling.

She finally makes eye contact with him, lowering her left sandal to the floor. Unthinkingly, he stares down the front of her dress, licks his lips nervously, and then looks back at her face, and she doesn’t make any indication that she’s uncomfortable with his lewd, accidental gaze.

“What’s going on with you, boss?” she asks, but to him it sounds more like _what’s gotten into you?_

His lips are damp and he says that he doesn’t know.  "I’m not your boss.“

"Sure seems like it to me, boss.  You’re the one who says if I stay or go, right?  You say jump, I ask ‘how high?’” She only ever calls him “boss” when she’s being playful.  "I like saying it. It rolls off the tongue.“

"I don’t like it. It makes me feel old.”

She shrugs.  "You _are_ old.“

He sits up in bed, indignance pouring out of his ears.  "No, I’m not!”

“You’re older than _me_ , boss.”  Her eyes flash in the lamplight.

He pulls the sheet over his shoulder and turns away from her, facing the wall instead. “Shut up.” he mumbles.  (But in his mind’s eye, he is mesmerized by the shape of her dress and her shoes on the ground and her body, graceful, lithe.) She changes into a large t-shirt.  He doesn’t look, but he knows what she wears to bed.  He tries to fall asleep. She turns out the lights.

(The room is dark blue. He waits for the springs to creak under her bed as she lays herself down, but is startled to feel her breath hot on his ear. She kisses his forehead and he doesn’t look at her, but he breathes out a sigh and she whispers an apology, he’s not old.  She then returns to her bed - it’s a gesture, nothing more.)

…

The next night, after a _long_ day of travelling, he kisses her on the lips for the first time.

They both meander into their hotel room and set their bags on the floor, and the second the door locks behind him he just does it.

And her lips are appropriately soft and taste almost like strawberry and she… she returns his kiss for a moment, and then, gently, pushes him away.

And then she flips the light switch on. “No use kissing in the dark and convincing yourself it’ll make you happy.”

He thinks that’s profound..

…

Their hearts begin to rumble as loudly as the vibrations of the stage, subwoofers in their ventricles keeping time to the other’s breathing.  And he keeps grabbing for her hand and she keeps pulling away - during soundcheck, in the van, in the middle of a performance.  He’s really, _really_ trying.  He’s never tried so hard in his life.  

“I’m a little bit in love with you.” he tells her, when they’re en route to Hungary and she has headphones in her ears.  She doesn’t move, but he knows she heard him.  “Emily, please-”

Seconds tick by.  She shifts her shoulders and leans back more into the airplane seat, checks the window as if, by looking outside, she can tell where they are.  Then she says, quietly, “You’re confused, boss.”

“Please just listen to me.”

She shakes her head.  “ _I said_ _no_ , Nate.”

He blinks, shifts, rubs his toes through his shoe. “Sorry.”

Will glances back at them.  He doesn’t say anything, but Nate can feel his gaze, this question of dominance, this question of doing right for Emily and protecting her and making sure that no one, not even Nate, is going to give her any crap.  There’s a part of Nate that’s embarrassed that Will would think of him like that, like _just some dude_ who’s going to flirt with Emily.  There’s also a part of Nate - the part that’s in love with Emily - that finds it reassuring, how protective Will is.  Reassuring that Emily isn’t alone, is safe, has people who she can turn to.  

She also notices Will looking at them and she flips him the bird, semi-whispers “fuck off.”

A time passes in silence, and Nate is regretting taking the window seat next to her.  This flight, Jack and Andrew are speaking with each other quite giddily, and Nate is the one stuck with no one to talk to.

He talks anyway.  He can’t keep quiet.  (Why can’t he just keep _quiet?_ )  “Why?” he asks.  And he’s not really sure what he’s saying.  He’s not sure what he means, by that word.  

She takes out her earbuds.  “I can’t date you because I’m afraid I’m going to hurt you.”

…

It’s not a war, it’s an ambush.  They pretend the in-flight conversation never happened, and they crack open the mini-fridge.  They toast over whatsits and that-one-beers and however you say “beef stew” in Hungarian, and everything inexplicably, and without warning, changes.

He watches her the way he’s been watching her for four weeks.  

“Put your beer down, boss.”  They’re lying on the same bed, next to each other, heads propped up on pillows.

He sets the brown glass bottle on the nightstand, while murmuring to himself “I’m so tired.”

“I know you are, me too, and the alcohol isn’t helping.  But this is hazy, right? Hazy is a good time to do this.” There’s something in her eyes that is new, and strange.  Something of determination.

She kisses him - lazily, with no pretense except her beer-chilled tongue in his mouth and her fingertips drumming along the side of his face.  He mumbles something inarticulate against her lips and she shuts her eyes and - and - and shifts over, slowly, hooks a knee behind the far side of his body and straddles him, the fringe of her hair brushing against his forehead.

She pulls away and he looks up at her, breathes through his mouth.  “You’re a good kisser.”

“Thanks.” she says.

He licks his lips and watches her.  “I thought we weren’t going to-”

“I just… I just…” she pulls away, resting herself on top of his thighs.  “Nate…”

“Just - just try to explain.  It doesn’t have to be perfect.  I’m tired.” (of talking in circles.)

She brushes stray hair away from her eyes.  “I’ve dated women and I’ve dated men, Nate.  And I’ve categorized them into two categories, thought of them as two different entities.”  Her fingertips press cotton into the skin of his stomach, thoughtfully.  “The men were handsome, and strong. People who I believed in.  The women were young, and thoughtful.  People who believed in _me_.”

Nate shifts into a sitting position.  “I believe in you.”

“I know.  That’s just it, though.”  She’s nervous - visibly, for the first time in all that he’s known her, _nervous_ \- about how he’s going to respond to this. She keeps biting her lower lip, and adjusting her clothes.  “I can’t pretend that-”

“I’m a _girl_ , to you?”  (He expects to be much more uncomfortable with the concept than he actually is.)

She looks away, balling her fingers into fists, “I don’t know.  I don’t want to emasculate you, I don’t want to make you upset.”

“I’m not upset.” He goes on to mumble something about how he wants her, no matter how she wants him, and then he’s kissing her again and

…

when they have sex, it feels like the first time.

…

The morning is not what either of them had hoped for.  Lobby call is at eight that morning which, to be fair, is later than usual.  But it means that, when they wake up at seven-thirty, they are in a rush to leave.  He doesn’t have the opportunity to break the coffeemaker trying to hold to old notions of courtesy.  She doesn’t have the time to convince him - and she knows, immediately, that he’ll need convincing - that last night was _good_ , despite the fact that she can’t bring herself to look him in the eye.  

There’s no time.  She’s putting on her shoes when he is getting dressed, and she doesn’t turn around to look at his body.  And he puts on his tailored-tight jeans even though it’s above 70 outside, because he feels like he needs a shield.  

In the elevator, alone, they finally make eye contact.  She reaches for his hand.

…

The relationship is unstable, ready to collapse into a pile of words and broken pieces any moment.  They kiss often, throughout the day.  Part of that is that it’s a physical manifestation of their emotions - it’s a way for them to continue and develop the relationship without actually discussing anything, like his concerns that she expects him to sprout breasts, or her concerns that he is practically her boss and what if he changes his mind.  Kissing is worship and love and need without sex.

(the sex was a mistake)

And they don’t kiss or touch or interact at all except when they’re away from everyone else, in the dressing rooms or behind the stage or in the back of the van.

During soundcheck, he sings _to her_.  She laughs - happily.  That makes him smile.  

…

And it really wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

He plays the show, and he grins like the whole world is watching (because they are, the whole world, and they all speak hungarian).  He sweats through his shirt and throws his life and soul into singing the same songs, and he feels empty.  Lightheaded.

He goes backstage when the set is over, and he collapses into the couch in the hallway behind the stage, and he breathes in the dust of the cushions and tries to calm down and regain a feeling of _presence_ , a feeling of _self_ , but he can’t.  He wraps his arms around himself.

(air enters and exits his lungs but he doesn’t feel it and he nuzzles further into the cushions of the itchy fabric of the couch behind the stage and hopes that the darkness and shut eyes will keep him inside himself but they don’t but he’s floating and shaking and he can’t form coherent thoughts and he just breathes in and out and he sees colors behind his eyes and he tries to stop shivering but the adrenaline feels more like poison and he’s going to throw up no he’s not he’s fine he’s breathing in and out free as a fucking bird but the couch behind the stage is itchy _hiccup_ and it doesn’t feel nice on his face he can hear voices is he hearing voices deeper voices _hiccup_ and he hears his name and his body feels fingers press into his shoulders but he doesn’t he doesn’t he’s not he can’t he breathes in and out _hiccup_ he sweats into the couch and thinks about underwater drowning and wonders if it feels any different from abovewater drowning which is what he’s doing now breathing in and out too fast his stomach is weak as his knees _hiccup_ that was too much too much too much too much too much)

“Nate? _Shit_ , Nate.”  That’s Jack’s voice.  “Nate, come on, calm down.  Shh, remember how we used to do this four years ago?” Nate remembers.  “Nate?”  He nods, breathes in and out and in and out. “Nate, you have to look at me.”

They make eye contact and Nate can’t look away.  Jack’s eyes are the only things he can see.  The world is fuzzy and slow and Nate is too fast.

“Andrew? Andrew, what’s going on?” That’s Emily, and she sounds not okay and

 _Shit_ , Emily, “Emily,” Nate whispers between panting breaths, “Emily.”

“Nate, don’t listen to them, focus on me, focus on what I’m saying, alright?” Jack’s voice is stern, fingers pressing hard into Nate’s shoulder.

“But-”

“Nate, you’re going to breath in and when you breath in I want you to hold it for one second.  Alright? Ready, set, One Mississippi.”

(He breaths twice in one second he can’t _do this_ )

“This time you’re gonna hold for two seconds, okay, Nate? Ready, set, One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, okay.  Alright.  Now three…”

(Jack is like a doctor in that he finds a cure that works and then administers it the same way, every time, forever)

…

Andrew, Nattie, and Emily watch on apprehensively as this scene plays out.  Will, always the wary, takes care to usher the roadies on their way, keeping them from rubbernecking or seeing something they weren’t supposed to see.  “This used to happen when we had some of our first big shows.  Not the casual, acoustic stuff but the big shows, with the flashing lights and such when we opened for bigger-name bands.”  

“What happened?”  asks Nattie.

“He would overexert himself during the shows and not sleep enough during the days, so after an intense show he would hyperventilate backstage.  So Jack and I, we’re used to helping him calm down, I guess.  Doesn’t make it less scary.   But, to be honest, I think he gets more spooked by his panic attacks than we do.” Andrew says.  “It hasn’t happened in awhile, though.  I’m surprised.”

Jack coaches Nate - like a professional - through slowing his breathing and calming down, and then asks “Alright?” Nate hesitates for a moment, then nods and pushes up on shaky bones to sit upright.  His face is wet but he doesn’t remember crying and he wipes his eyes open-fisted like a child.

“Thanks.” he whispers (he’s still breathing slightly faster than usual.)

“You’re welcome,” says Jack, “Do you need anything else?  Do you want some water or something?”

“Can I just be alone for a bit?”

…

It’s dissonant: Nate here, on this couch, alone, shaken up and scared and quiet, against a backdrop of roadies and techies and managers taking apart the stage.

Emily assumes that Nate’s request for everyone to leave didn’t apply to her, and sits down next to him on the couch.  And it becomes clear that she was right in her assumption, because he rests his head on her shoulder.  He’s still crying, but silently, his face is pink.

“I’ve been working with you for three years, Nate, and that’s never happened.” she says. She wraps an arm around his shoulders, fingers drum against his stomach and he curls in closer.  Everyone around them is noticing, but no one is stopping to look.  The drumset is wheeled to the van.  “Was it because of last night?”

He scoffs half-heartedly and shifts closer, pulling his knees onto the couch.  “You think I haven’t had sex in three years?”

She says,  “I think you got emotional, and you didn’t know how to handle that without hurting yourself.”

…

And now they room together.

That night, she pulls him to their hotel room early, and directs him to sit on the bed while she fetches her toiletries out of her bag.  What she’s about to do has probably been sparked by seeing him, again, as vulnerable.  Vulnerable means feminine.  Feminine means beauty.  “You want whatever I want.” she says aloud, absently, as she picks out colors.

He doesn’t respond.  At the silence, she turns around, and he’s still sitting there on the edge of the bed, hands in his lap, one leg pulled up on the mattress.  He’s watching her, and his face indicates neither affirmation nor denial of her suggestion.  (his eyes are blue - very blue.  it feels like she’s never noticed that before.)

“Is that alright, Nate?”

He licks his lips and squirms thoughtfully.  “I don’t know what you’re asking me.”

“I’m going to…” she turns back to her bag, “I’m going to make you feminine.”

“Oh.”

She picks what she was searching for (an eye color palette, eyeliner, lip liner, lipstick, blush).  And then she returns to the bed, brushes his hair out of his eyes with her fingers and marvels at the fact that he doesn’t stop her, that he leans in to give her better access to his skin. “I’m not going to give you any foundation because we have different skin tones and I don’t have anything that would look good on you.”

“Okay.” He’s not sure if the point of this is for him to _look good_ , though.

There’s something tender about this.  She lifts his chin and tells him to hold still, then brings the pencil to the curve of his lips.  “There you go,” she murmurs to him (this doesn’t feel real.)  “There you go, stay still.  You’ve got such a pretty mouth, you know?”

He tries to respond and she shakes her head no, urgently, _don’t move._ So he doesn’t speak, he just lets her paint his face and stares at her with his blue eyes.  He has long eyelashes. His gaze is almost accusatory.  Maybe that’s just what she is seeing.  

It’s like glass shattering.  She finishes with the lip liner and moves on to filling in with a pink, lipstick.  She tells him to rub his lips together.  He does.

“You’re a very beautiful person, you know that?” She wants to kiss him.

He smiles a bit and she takes out the eyeshadow palette.  “I like when you pay attention.” he says.

She brushes his hair out of his eyes, again.  He wants to kiss her.  

“Now, I need you to shut your eyes, and it’s going to feel kind of weird but don’t move, okay?”  He shuts his eyes.  She focuses on his right eyelid first. The shade is a deep brown, but the color isn’t the important part.  What’s important is that he is staying still.  He flinches when the pad touches his eyelid but otherwise he tries not to move.  It’s an expression of trust.  

She moves onto the other eyelid, and then the second color on both, and then the third.

His eyes are shut and she’s done with that part and so she just kind of kisses him.  He makes a surprised noise, openmouthed, because he wasn’t expecting that, and he returns the kiss, and this is what she was looking for, isn’t it?

She wanted his vulnerability.

“Do you want to see?” she asks him.  He shrugs noncommittally.  She adjusts the collar of his t-shirt, pulls it down to reveal more of his skin, brushes stray powders from his shoulders.

“I don’t want to see,” he says, when she goes to fetch a compact mirror from her bag.  She asks him why.

He says that he wants to be whatever she wants him to be, but he’s not a girl.

She pauses, and the smile she was wearing seeps into her skin and disappears from her face.  “I know.” she says.  “I know that. I’m not trying to…  I know.”

“But I-” he is alarmed by the sadness in her voice, “But I can-”

“Here.” she says, and tosses him a wipe, “That’ll take it off.”

“But, Emily-”

“No, it’s alright.  I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, Nate.”

…

Moments later, he’s staring at himself in Emily’s compact mirror.  It’s a small mirror and it’s magnified, and the closer you see something the more beautiful it becomes, and now his left eye is the most incredible thing about himself.  

“Aren’t you going to look at the rest?”

“I just…” (it’s so surreal to see himself and, for the first time, possess all of the markers of beauty that he likes in other people.)

She wipes the makeup off of his face, when it’s time for them to sleep.  He spends the night with her arms around him, sleeping with his face warm between her chin and chest, and her fingers on his back.

…

They’re together, but not for long.  

The relationship isn’t built on love for each other, it’s built on love for each other’s _potential_ , with what they could be instead of who they are.  He’s in love with her as something to protect, something to worship, something to love and admire for beauty and subtleties.  She’s in love with him for trust and care and anxieties and vulnerability and things he doesn’t want to be.  In order to make him happy, he must be able to take care of her.  In order to make her happy, she must be able to take care of him.

But, outside of that, they do make each other happy.  It’s the physicality of their relationship that keeps them together for as long as they remain together.  Because they’re both lonely, and he likes her fingers in his hair and she likes the angle of his hips and the way he pants her name.

They’re together, but not for long.

It was new, and that was good.  But they don’t want to have sex with each other anymore - not because it was bad but because it wasn’t what they were looking for.  And kissing becomes a chore - not because they become less enamored with each other’s mouths, but because they enjoy the subtleties and rarities more than the act itself.

“Looking hot, boss.” she says to him one morning, after the second night of not sleeping in the same bed anymore (it gets too hot).  And he looks up.

And she grins at him.  She’s offering a return to almost normal.

They don’t want a relationship.  They just want to be around each other.

He takes her out to lunch.  And normally she would object but she… she doesn’t because… she’s noticed things.  She’s noticed that he respects her.  She never expected that.

He’s a perfect gentleman.  They do it in London, to a nice little pub with her favorite kind of soup and french fries - _chips_ \- that he read about on the internet.  And he pulls out her chair for her and she finds that, unlike the separate rooming and the treating her like a breakable _thing_ that she has experienced from Will and Jack and them, this sort of treatment, the almost ironic, playful courtesies, she doesn’t mind.  She likes it, even.  She likes him.

(They’re hopeless.) (They were only “together”, really, for about three days.)

And at some point during lunch - and he keeps laughing, she’s never seen him laugh so much in all that she’s known him, genuinely _laughing_ the way he does at old Friends reruns or when Jack and Andrew start talking nonsense about old movies - at some point in lunch, when he’s grinning so wide and his fingers are grabbing at his own wrists, when he’s blushing bashful like the fucking dwarf, she starts giggling, and crying.

He tenses, “Are you alright?”

“We can’t… be together like we were, Nate.”

“I know.  I’m not asking you to marry me or anything.  Why are you crying?”

“Because…” she wipes her eyes and shakes her head, smiling down at her soup as the city moves around them, “I’m happy.  I’m just… very happy to be friends with you.”

He nods, and then nods some more, and his eyes are warm.  

(They are in love, they are in love.)


End file.
